When The Machine’s first prototype arrives, it will carry energy-hungry DRAM in their place. The memory will be a stand-in, the team says, that can be used to emulate later hardware and move development forward. “Everything the Machine team is doing is designed to get us to working, useful Machine prototypes as quickly as possible,” the group wrote to IEEE Spectrum. “We still believe memristors are the best candidate, but rather than waiting until memristors are ready before making prototype Machines, we’ll use more conventional memory to learn about memory fabrics and how operating systems, analytics, and applications should change now rather than waiting.” Memristors, in principle, will be slotted in later, although no time frame has been given for when that might occur.